James Cagney and Pat O'Brien in the Strand's Crackling Melodrama, 'Ceiling Zero.'

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When "Ceiling Zero" was produced on Broadway last Spring, Frank Wead, its author, was chided for having written it with one round eye on Hollywood. There is no reason to believe that Mr. Wead resented the accusation then; certainly he must be proud of it today. For Hollywood, in bringing his melodrama of commercial aviation to the screen of the Strand, has taken what was essentially a brittle piece of good theatre and has converted it into a rugged and virile photoplay which is not merely the crackling account of some dramatic incidents in the lives of a few men and women, but, in a very real sense, the record of a page torn from the swiftly moving history of aviation.Unquestionably Mr. Wead did write "Ceiling Zero" for the screen. When he limited the action of his play to a single setting—the operations office of the Federal Air Lines at Hadley Field, Newark—he was bowing to the imposed restrictions of the theatre. He cloaked those limitations well, admitting the outside world to his stage through two-way radio conversations with ships in the air, and even conveying the illusion—with red fire and brilliantly managed sound effects—of an invisible plane crashing to the earth. The camera, being above these restrictions, has not had to resort to subterfuge, and being skillfully directed by Howard Hawks, has been able to increase the drama's scope without loss of its intensity.Subjecting its audiences to an emotional battering not common even in these days of superior photoplays, the Strand's new film is a constantly absorbing chronicle of life in and around a commercial airport. Into the surcharged atmosphere of the hectic operations office comes Dizzy Davis, veteran of thousands of flights and as many romantic entanglements, to be greeted boisterously by his wartime friends, Jake Lee, operations manager, and Tex Clark, another pilot. There, too, is an attractive young woman who innocently becomes the instrument of two men's deaths and, more significantly, seals the doom of an outworn age of romanticism in aviation.For the immediate cause of Tex Clark's death may have been Dizzy Davis's little joke of pretending he was too ill to take his flight when really he just wanted to see the girl again; but, basically, Tex died because his friend still was playing with aviation, considering it merely an exciting way of expressing his own reckless courage and disregard for the fears of others. And that is the tragedy of "Ceiling Zero" and that constitutes its meaning as a chapter of aviation history.Yet it would be an injustice to consider the picture merely an object lesson. Tersely written, handsomely produced and played to perfection by James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Stuart Erwin, June Travis, Isabel Jewell, Gary Owen, James Bush and the rest, the film is one of the best to come from the Warner studios. The screen has presented no more effective episode of stark drama than that in which Clark's plane, lost in the fog and with its radio apparatus out of commission, fights its way to the field, tears into high-tension wires and sears an agonizing path along the ground, leaving a flaming trail behind it.This once give Hollywood its due: it has given wings to a play about aviation.